It was viewed widely that the Cowboys roughly made an even swap when they let ILB Zach Thomas go this offseason and replaced him with ex-Falcons LB Keith Brooking. But so far, while Thomas is out of the league, Brooking has raised the play of the position and had an excellent start to his first season in Dallas after spending his first 11 years in Atlanta. And Brooking has spent his entire football career in Georgia — from high school to Georgia Tech to the Falcons — until this season.

But Brooking hasn't wasted time stepping forward as a leader in the locker room on his new club, preaching the need for accountability. The Cowboys have been uneven defensively to date, but Brooking likes the way they have responded recently.

"Something I have learned quickly and I have tried to encourage to the guys is, there's no need to push the panic button," he told PFW. "I think that has been the case in the past, just because of the attention, the microscope this team is under. … There is a lot of football left. The camp we had, the offseason we had, the players we have on defense, we have no reason to worry if we keep working.

"We've had one bad half of run defense, the first half against Tampa. Our goal every week is less than 3.7 yards per rush; we held the Giants to that, and it was actually the only goal that we made as a defense (for that game). You're talking about maybe the best run offense, though, so we felt pretty good about that. But (the Panthers game) was the first time we put together four quarters of defense together, both against the run and the pass. Just a dominating performance, and we reached every one of our goals. And now that's something we expect each and every week."

Head coach Wade Phillips said Brooking was outstanding against the Panthers in Week Three, although Brooking says he tries not to look backward too much. One element of his game that we haven't seen a lot of previously was blitzing, but it was on display a number of times in the first half of Week Three. Typically, Bradie James is the inside linebacker who has been asked to blitz the majority of the time.

"I've never really been in a position to blitz (before now), for whatever reason," Brooking said. "But I feel I have the ability to do that. I think Wade has the confidence in both of us to do that, so we're mixing that up. I don't think I have any more blitzes called for me that Bradie does for him. We're both aggressive-type of linebackers, and even if we're not making the play in the backfield, if we're just disrupting things, we can make something happen."

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